Excerpt from The Wound by Arc Publications

The Wound

Wound

The JOHN KINSELLA Poems after Buile Suibhne and Friedrich Hรถlderlin

2018

Published by Arc Publications Nanholme Mill, Shaw Wood Road, Todmorden OL14 6DA, UK www.arcpublications.co.uk Copyright © John Kinsella, 2018 Copyright in the present edition © Arc Publications, 2018 Design by Tony Ward Printed by Lightning Source 978 1910345 97 9 (pbk) 978 1910345 98 6 (hbk) 978 1910345 99 3 (ebk) Acknowledgements Some of these poems have previously been published in Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Meanjin, Mutually Said (a blog John Kinsella shares with Tracy Ryan), Overland, Salzburg Review, Stop the War Coalition website, The Wolf and York Community Matters Newspaper. Special thanks to Andrée Gerland and to the Literary Cultures of the Global South programme, University of Tübingen, Germany, where the author was in residence for some months during 2016. Special thanks too to all at Arc Publications – James Byrne, Jean Boase-Beier, Tony Ward and Angela Jarman. The author has had a special interaction with Arc for over two decades, and appreciates the rigorous attention they have always given his work as well as the personal support he has received from them. Further thanks to Curtin University and Churchill College, Cambridge University. Cover image: © Stephen Kinsella, 2018, by kind permission of the artist. This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part of this book may take place without the written permission of Arc Publications.

Editor for Arc’s International Poets series James Byrne

For Tracy, Tim, the ‘Save Beeliar Wetlands’ protesters, Andrée, and James Quinton

Contents

Introduction / 9 BOOK ONE – AFTER SWEENEY

Sweeney Prototype (Outdoors, West Cork) / 15 Sweeney the Vegan / 17 Sweeney’s Lament / 23 Sweeney’s Remedy for Bathos / 24 Graphology Chronotype 3: Sweeney / 26 Sweeney Deplores Nationalism in the Hazy Days of Summer / 27 Sweeney in the Hawthorn Tree Confused by Hiberno-Australian-English / 28 Sweeney Suffers at the Paws of the Otter / 31 Sweeney’s Flight of Exile / 33 A Charred Sweeney Arises, Brainwashed by the State, to Imprint Himself on the Locals Taking up Their Racist Desires / 35 Is it Hubris with which Sweeney Awaits the Approach of a Double Front? / 37 Sweeney – ‘Little Birdie Flying High’ – Shits on a Gathering of Crypto-Fascists but Means Nothing Aggressive by It / 38 The Tenets or Tenants of Sweeney / 39 Sweeney – Bird Brain Dissembler / 40 Sweeney the Thesaurus Bird / 41 Sweeney Encounters a Russian Adventurer in the Avon Valley / 43 Sweeney Deplores the Rise of the Fascists / 45 Sweeney Tries to Warn Locals of the Danger of a Radioactive Waste Dump / 47 Sweeney Goes to Sing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ but No Sound Issues Forth / 49 Sweeney Contemplates a Display of Force by the Police State / 50 Sweeney Inside the Wound, the Graveyard, the Deathzone / 52 Sweeney the Barn Owl Opens His Eyes Wide in Broad Daylight / 53 Sweeney’s Last Will and Testament / 54

Sweeney Witnesses the Attack on the Coolbellup Bush by the Forces of a Corrupt Police State / 55 Having Given Up the Ghost, Sweeney Flies in with Seedlings to Help Stitch the Wound / 57 Sweeney Dreams He’s Having a Nightmare of Clearing / 58 INTERLUDE

The Old Professors Try to Knock Sweeney Off His Perch in the Hölderlinturm / 63 BOOK TWO – AFTER HÖLDERLIN

After ‘Friedensfeier’ / 67 Flames after Hölderlin: Wenn über dem Weinberg / 72 Barely Hölderlin’s ‘Vom Abgrund nemlich’ / 73 Subtexting ‘Der Spaziergang’ / 75 Searching ‘Der Spaziergang’ / 76 Winter: Artificial Lake Heading Towards Meltdown / 77 Inverting ‘Geh unter, schöne Sonne’ / 78 Hölderlin’s ‘Abendphantasie’ and the Unwelcomings of Here / 79 Reaching into ‘Des Morgens’ / 80 In lieblicher Bläue? / 81 Oedipus Speaks: after Hölderlin’s Sophocles’ Oedipus Second Act Scene One Opening Speech / 82 Messenger: after the Fifth Speech of the Messenger, Act 1, Scene 3 of Hölderlin’s Sophocles’ Antigone / 84 After Hölderlin’s ‘Der Winkel vont Hahrdt’ / 86 Fantasia on Hölderlin’s ‘Hälfte des Lebens’ / 87 Fantasia (2) on Hölderlin’s ‘Hälfte des Lebens’ / 88 Fantasia (3) on Hölderlin’s ‘Hälfte des Lebens’ / 89 Listening to Nirvana and Working With Andree Gerland’s ‘Literal’ Version of Hölderlin’s ‘Hälfte des Lebens’ / 90 After Hölderlin’s Pindar Extravaganza When He Was Supposedly Past It: ‘Das Unendliche’ (‘The Infinite’) / 91

After Hölderlin’s Pindar Extravaganza When He Was Supposedly Past It: ‘Vom Delphin’ / 92 After Hölderlin’s Pindar Extravaganza When He Was Supposedly Past It: ‘Das Belebende’ / 93 After ‘Der Sommer’ – ‘Wenn dann vorbei’ des Frühlings Blüthe schwindet / 95 Hymn of Beyond Hölderlin’s ‘Wie Meeresküsten…’? / 96 We, Too – after Hölderlin’s ‘Wenn aus dem Himmel / 97 Distance is How We (dis)Orientate: After ‘Wenn aus der Ferne…’ / 99 Biographical Note / 101

Introduction

The Wound is two short books in conversation with each other, making a single but pluralistic response to the violence being enacted by humans on humans, and on the natural environment. The Wound is a conversation about peace out of the wounds we have inflicted on the planet in our rapacity and greed, our consumer obsessions. The literal ‘wound’ refers to the horrendous gouge in unique coastal bushland in the Beeliar Wetlands and surroundings enacted by the Western Australian conservative Liberal PartyNational Party former coalition government under leader Colin Barnett as part of the absurd Roe 8 Highway Extension project in Perth. Having caused much damage, the Barnett government was ousted from power in March 2017, resulting in a cessation of clearing and destruction, but the need for vigilance is a permanent thing. Other bushland at Golden Bay near Perth has been cleared, with BHP [the Anglo-Australian multinational mining, metals and petroleum company] making ready to destroy over 16,000 hectares of habitat to extend their mining operations in the Pilbara, Western Australia. The struggle for the environment is ongoing, and permanent. The assault by the Trump administration on ‘wilderness’, ‘monuments’ and coastal waters in the USA, the burning of furze and destruction of hedgerows in Ireland, and the struggle to preserve woodland in the UK, are part of a grim reality of global destruction. To confront this reality, I have remagined Sweeney, the ‘mad king’ damned by St. Rónán, suffering as a bird but also bizarrely visionary in a world of warfare and vengeance, emerging out of the wound with visions, epiphanies, revelations, and insistences. The Sweeney poems are entirely my own poems but bounce off the original Irish (anti) epic poem, playing with cycles of motifs and plot mechanisms, with allusions to early Irish poetry in form and gesture. The text distantly followed was Buile Suibhne (The Frenzy of Suibhne), being the adventures of Subhne Geilt, a Middle Irish romance translated by J. G. O’Keeffe, the 1913 edition of which

I read online (https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T302018/index.html). I also looked at the 1975 OUP printed edition in the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. A number of the Sweeney poems appeared on the blog I keep with Tracy Ryan, Mutually Said, as part of a pacifist resistance against the rapacious assault on the Western Australian environment by government and industry during the Roe 8 debacle already mentioned, the ‘Cathedral Avenue’ roadside tree clearing wherein the Main Roads Department of Western Australia destroyed ancient old growth trees as part of roadwidening – they could have reduced the speed limit for safety – and other ‘clearing’ of bushland and forest, especially in the Western Australian wheatbelt which now has less than four percent of its original vegetation. Many of these poems are written in support of protesters at the Beeliar Wetlands and on the YorkQuairading Road, such as the wonderful Lindsay McNeill who resisted until the last tree was felled and after. It should be said that I am not Sweeney – Sweeney is manybeaked and becomes many people and animals. He is a bestiary entire in himself, and a litmus paper testing the waters, airs, and soils of country, of conflict, of bigotry, of life, hope and redemption. The primary text followed in the writing of the Hölderlin poems was the bilingual masterwork, Michael Hamburger’s Friedrich Hölderlin: Poems and Fragments (trans. Michael Hamburger; 4th Edition, Anvil Press, 2004). I read and ‘interacted with’ David Constantine’s energetic translation, Hölderlin’s Sophocles: Oedipus and Antigone (Bloodaxe Books, 2001). I also made use of a literal translation of ‘Half of Life’ by Andrée Gerland and acknowledge my long discussions on Hölderlin with Andrée in Tübingen, plus his gift of Friedrich Hölderlin: Hälfte des Lebens with an essay by Jochen Schmidt (Verlag der Buchhandlung Zimmermann, 2008). Other sources include Hölderlin material held in the Hölderlin Tower collection in Tübingen, plus the various German editions of his

work that crossed my path (and were used more for ‘shape’ and ‘flow’ than literal translation purposes, a task which belongs to a ‘translator’ per se, rather than a poet deeply affected by the idea of the originals as much as the actual texts). My purpose is always peace, and these poems are written in the brutal shadows of the conflict in Syria, and the bombing by major powers. These are a pacifist response to conflict. They are also a pacifist response to the destruction of country and an affirmation of Indigenous land rights, especially Aboriginal land rights in Australia. I wish to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the ‘Western Australian’ lands I write – the Ballardong Noongar and Whadjuk Noongar peoples. I acknowledge Elders past, present, and future. Just a few extra words regarding the poems responding to Hölderlin’s Sophocles translations / versions as they are notorious in translation circles because of their oddness and ‘errors’ re the original (the version he used was also likely suspect according to David Constantine). But maybe even odder in this case because I have had Constantine’s effort at rendering a version into English constantly in mind as I’ve run rampant with the poems-plays to recreate something purposefully deconstructive (yes, I mean that precisely). Constantine writes in his introduction to the Bloodaxe versions of Oedipus and Antigone: ‘I kept close to his strange German, in the hope of arriving at an analogous strangeness in English. But his language is beautiful and troubling too, and in carrying over much of that will be lost like precious water from a leaky vessel.’ It’s this translation loss that delights me and that, for me, creates entry points and exits, voids and holes to weave through – in the slippages the new poem comes that is a splintered reflection of an original lost through translation of translation and (re)versioning of this. This is a book of political resistance against militarism, environmental destruction, colonialism, xenophobia, racism and fascism spoken out of the wound/s. John Kinsella , December 2017

BOOK ONE

After Sweeney

Sweeney Prototype (Outdoors, West Cork)

To be wild here you only Have to dissent from identity – Don’t drink from the piss pot, Don’t love but damn the Church. Welcome strangers to your patch Of turf, don’t hack turf into sods To burn until the village chokes. Replant wild land without subsidies. Don’t shoot the fox nor drain the cow, Lampoon traditions of pollution; Accept that you will likely be Strung up at the crossroads. Claim the glory of a grey wagtail – yellow bird – So rare in winter even twitchers Will say ‘mis-sighting’, ‘misattribution’, When you know you’re right. Accept the wisdom of two-pot Screamers, welcome the blowback, ‘Or worse’, a foreigner – accept exCommunication from entire townlands. To say, ‘There’s asbestos and danger’, To read W. B. Yeats by moonlight. Ignore: ‘We don’t do that in Ireland!’ And let the rumour of damnation fester. Love white swans and red sandstone, Count the ridges of Barnancleeve, Wish you were stranded on Fastnet, Soar higher than the gannet.

Yell at the shit-spreader, Spit slurry out of intensive piggeries, Co-habit with a quiet but fiery woman Who will keep gossip to herself.

Sweeney the Vegan

They say I am mad, out of my tree, as I eat fruits and nibble leaves, harvest nuts and make tempeh. As a teenager I played war games and dreamed of being a general. I collected guns and ammunition, hunted foxes and parrots. I grew sleepless and made night my daylight, colouring the sky with hallucinogens and narcotics, wandering with agitation. I watched bullets fly unspent from the breech, my brother unloading as fast as I could load. And watching over the farm, I struck a ram in the ute, and cradling its heavy, horned head, its broken neck, decided to shoot it dead. Something shifted, something disconnected, and I went up to the wheatbins with a damaged sense of self, distressed as fellow workers shot cats. And then backpacking from Bali to Nepal, other possibilities mocked and harried my predicament: the hunger to score, the clichĂŠ of searching.

Part of me broke free in the highest mountains and settled in a temple tree, though I didn’t know it. A bus accident and a litany of death – a chopper in to take away the wounded, corpses left broken at the bottom of ravines. To return without having really left, to drink and drug to oblivion – without art, without creativity – just damage and loss and death. To move into the squat in Fremantle, where vegetables were the only food when there was food, to sign away from meat in self-disgust. To retreat south with my brother and girlfriend, to climb the flooded gum on the roadside beside the dairy, where tired cows dragged tonnes of hoodwink. To wake one morning in asbestos walls, the spring cold leaching in from irrigated fields, swollen jerseys calling into the fog to be relieved of their burdens. To talk it out over breakfast, dollops of cream the body and blood. Haycarting we’d been told the ‘old girls’ would make blood and bone.

To take wing and flit north then south again, into the settler’s chestnut tree, looking down at the haters poisoning water, driving us out. Living in a field of cattle earmarked for slaughter – young ‘Molly B12’ nuzzling our hands, the screaming fox at night. I was vegan and returned to my girlfriend alone in the shack. My brother had found his own way and I sang my song of living flesh. A decade of flying, staying above ground while every fibre yearned for obliteration, held together by an ethics of Pythagoras. In rehab, living in the Globe Hotel or the Supreme Court Gardens, hearing of friend after friend dying of overdose, the song kept me alive. Shivering by the sea, colder inland on a star-blown night I listened to animal-sounds secure. And when I joined forces with the woman who knew the same – one who had abandoned habits of flesh-eating years before,

I vanished into the Indian Ocean, went crazy on a coral speck eating coconuts and rice, shreds of green and chilli from the islands’ greenhouses. To break the cycle. Break free. Rejoin the animal world, the kingdom without hierarchy. But still sleepless, some call me crazy, edgy. I renounce all organised religion and feel liberated spiritually, no animals are slaughtered to pave my way to plenty. Plenty is sharing space, Plenty is hearing another’s breath, Plenty is every atom of the biosphere, Plenty is the weapon that cannot hurt me. Returning home the other day, we discovered a spatterwork of blood by the front door, and only today after noticing a lone doe with joey do I see. The mob broken up in our absence by gunfire, the doe sheltering by the house, our shelter – this is more than Heidegger could make of dwelling to Celan in the forest. Refuge is the key. Refuge is where no creature will be killed by us for flesh but will make its own way – fences down and passage no rite de passage condescended by us.

Almost three decades have passed. I have learnt not to proselytise, and this song is not a commandment. My song is still a lament, and I perch high in the old York gum that lost a limb in the last storm – I hear the owl homing in on its prey, and have nothing to say against its way, knowing it’s not my way. High temperatures are shredding this environment self-designed over millennia to take the heat – failsafes have failed and a backup isn’t in place. Fire ran close to us just last night. My fingers are not claws, my teeth are not for tearing, my legs are not for running down, my feet not for trampling. The music I hear is not all sweetness – the abattoir fills my ears with blood, the paddock with sheep conversations firebreaks itself with burning flesh. There’s no denying the truth – the ‘sacrifice’ of animals to human addiction and thanatos. This omnicultural worshipping of death to affirm life. I breathe past the smoke, breathe in clear blue sky. Though no watercress to hand, I eat pulses and leafy greens – the water deep below quivers under our weight.

They say I am mad, out of my tree, as I eat fruits and nibble leaves, harvest nuts and make tempeh. I listen to the peace like static around a world at war, I know the real clichĂŠs are in the consuming of the living and the dead.

Sweeney’s Lament

What I glean through gaps in mountains What I hear of swan’s sweeping wings What I cherish in the green of watercress – Nary the stain of emptiness? Nary the signs of wickedness? Nary the all-fours grinding of distress?